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by hollerith
4975 days ago
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Instead of competing head-on with Apple, Google and Microsoft in the "mobile touch" market, a much smaller player late to the market, like Ubuntu or Mozilla, should probably have tried to differentiate its OS in some strategic and major way or just stayed out of the market. (Note that even if being open-source were enough of a differentiator, which I doubt, one of the established OSes is already mostly open-source.) Working well with e-ink would have been a good point of differentiation in the mobile market given e-ink's advantage in energy efficiency. |
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I think there were 2 big "opportunities" to create OSs. IE times when the hardware existed & the demand existed: netbooks & "mobile." The latter wasn't really an opportunity because the company that built the hardware & generated the demand also made the software. Still it was enough of a gap that android snuck in.
Ubuntu & Mozilla had a wide open chance with Netbooks for a couple of years. There was demand. Manufacturers were keen. Vista was bombing. Users would have excepted an OS that didn't run everything as long as it had some lite browser, lite office app, Skype, media player and a few other bits and pieces optimized for the little display. You could have gotten away with not having MS office or Apple itunes, especially on the first generation Eee.
Both of those opportunities existed because of the millions of apps also know as websites that they could run before any developer even knew they existed. I don't think there will ever be an "in" that big.
e-ink phones?.. Maybe. Battery life would definitely be a selling point. Some people need phones that last longer. But it's predefined as a niche market. It wouldn't be very good on the web (try using a browser on an e-ink to see what I mean. It's cute, but that's it.) so it would need custom apps. Without apps I would love to see music players and email clients for e-ink, it'd be super futuristic. But, to get developers you need scale and excitement. Would a niche player be able to get that?